The Useless Tree

Confucius/Confucianism

  • Lee Myung-bak as a reminder that Korea is not as Confucian as some would want us to think.

         Lee Myung-bak, the candidate of the conservative Grand National Party, won a significant electoral victory in South Korea’s presidential poll yesterday.  The elections were free and fair, though turnout was relatively low (about 63%), and Lee captured about… Continue reading

  • Instantaneous Interaction: More on Confucian Facebook Friends

         A while back I posted some thoughts on what Confucianism might make of the social networking sites like Facebook. My initial sense was this: While, for Confucians, our family obligations are primary, we need friends, face-to-face friends, to… Continue reading

  • Ancient Sages in New Jersey

         Today’s news: Gov. on S. Corzine signed into law a measure repealing New Jersey’s death penalty on Monday, making the state the first in a generation to abolish capital punishment.      Confucius would be happy.  As I… Continue reading

  • Creating Insight, Forging New Paths

         A nice little piece in today’s NYT Sunday Magazine by Annping Chin, describing the revival of ancient Chinese thought in contemporary China, told from the perspective of a Chinese philosophy student.  She mentions a fairly common view of… Continue reading

  • Naming Torture

         Yesterday Andrew Sullivan deconstructed an NYT article that avoided using the word "torture" for assaults that are obviously torture.  The money graf: It is not a disputable opinion that waterboarding is torture. There is no debate here. There… Continue reading

  • Not Searching for Confucius

        Another reminder of just how irrelevant Confucianism is to young, urban, middle class, tech savvy Chinese people these days (and, for that matter, Americans of similar demographic profile).  Here, thanks to CDT, is a comparison of the most… Continue reading

  • Experimental Confucianism

        An interesting piece in the NYT Magazine on Sunday by Kwame Anthony Appiah.  He describes a new wrinkle in academic philosophy, experimental philosophy (or x-phi to those in the know), which is based on survey data and other… Continue reading

  • What Parents Owe Their Children

         This morning, listening to the radio, I heard a story about my former student, Nate Krissoff, and his father, Dr. Bill Krissoff.      Nate was in the Marines and was killed in Iraq on this day last… Continue reading

  • Assisted Suicide

        This past Sunday, the NYT Magazine ran a piece on assisted suicide.  As I started to read it, I thought it conjured up certain Confucian themes, but by the time I had finished it, I was definitely thinking… Continue reading

  • Confucius in Taiwan

         I just returned from an evening discussion, with a group of students here at Williams, about China and Taiwan.  The idea was to have people from these different places talk about their understanding and experience of the other. … Continue reading